Elon Musk either had a slipped-mask moment or is supremely awkward.
Illustration by The Atlantic. Source: Angela Weiss / AFP / Getty.
Did Elon Musk actually toss off a
Sieg heil! at Donald Trump’s inauguration rally today?
A lot of people online seem to think he did, based on data from their eyeballs. Freeze-frame images of Musk on social media show the world’s richest man at a podium in Washington, D.C.’s Capital One Arena engaging in what could definitely be construed as a Nazi salute. Video clips of Musk’s speech support this conclusion. Musk stands at the podium, graced with the presidential seal, and thanks the crowd. Then he forcefully slaps his right hand to his chest and rather violently extends his arm outward diagonally to the audience. Multiple
historians have
backed the idea that Musk’s gesture was
indeed a
Nazi salute. “Thank you,” Musk says. He makes the gesture to the crowd, turns 180 degrees, and repeats it to the rest of the crowd behind him. “My heart goes out to you,” he adds, placing his hand back on his chest.
What’s left out of much of the discussion is that Musk is supremely, almost cosmically, awkward and stilted. All close observers of Musk—and
I am one—know this.
So which one is it? A mask-off full-Nazi moment or just a graceless tech baron not in full control of both his arms and his feelings? (It wouldn’t be the first time he’s
embarrassed himself onstage using his limbs.) I would urge you to watch the video for yourself.
Musk has not yet commented publicly on what he did, and he did not respond to my inquiry about what, exactly, he thought he was doing up there. (It’s worth noting that the video Musk posted of his speech did not show Musk performing the gesture head-on—it cut away to the crowd; a
C-SPAN clip shows it in full, though.) Eventually, he will almost certainly deny that he Sieg heiled. If history is a guide, he will post on X, scoffing at the accusations. He could make a self-deprecating joke about being so excited that he wasn’t aware of his body. He could act like a troll, like he did when a German magazine likened him to a member of Hitler’s cabinet, and he responded,
“I did Nazi that coming.” The most disturbing response might be if he says nothing at all. So far, he has posted several times on X today without addressing the matter.
Musk’s X has given a megaphone to bigots and restored the accounts of banned racists. I’ve argued that
Musk has turned X into a white-supremacist website. Musk himself has spent recent weeks enthusiastically endorsing Germany’s far-right political party, Alternative für Deutschland, or AfD. Members of the party
have had documented ties to neo-Nazis; in 2018, the co-leader of the AfD
downplayed the significance of the Holocaust and the crimes of the Nazi regime. Musk has
endorsed posts about the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory. Even those inside the MAGA movement have voiced concerns about Musk. This month, the former Trump adviser Steve Bannon
called Musk “a truly evil guy, a very bad guy.” He used the word
racist to describe Musk and others in Trump’s Silicon Valley inner circle who have South African heritage: “Why do we have South Africans, the most racist people on earth, white South Africans, we have them making any comments at all on what goes on in the United States?”
All of this informs how one might interpret Musk on the stage today. Above all else, Musk is a troll, an edgelord. He delights in “triggering” his ideological enemies, which includes the media. And his gesture—whatever the intent—has done just that. In a way, the uproar online over Musk is reminiscent of an incident in the first months of the first Trump administration, when two pro-Trump influencers were photographed in the White House press room making the “OK” hand gesture. The photo was interpreted by some media members as a white-power symbol. Reporters and organizations such as the Anti-Defamation League traced it back to racist message boards like 4chan’s /pol/ board. Eventually, however, the gestures appeared to be part of an
attempt, by 4chan, to trick the mainstream media into overreacting and turning the handiwork of a few trolls into national news. The whole affair was exhausting and difficult to follow. A message board that trafficked in hate speech created a fake hate-speech symbol to try to trick the media into calling something racist. (The ADL, it is worth noting, has extended Musk the benefit of the doubt, issuing a statement that Musk made an “awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute,” and encouraged everyone to “give one another a bit of grace.”)
None of that is to suggest that Musk’s salute wasn’t genuine. A practiced troll consistently crosses redlines because they want to offend and trigger. They also swaddle their actions in enough detached irony and cynicism that allow them to relentlessly mock or harass anyone who dares take them seriously. There is every reason to take a right-wing troll at face value, and yet doing so often means giving them what they want: an intense reaction they can use against you.
For now, all anyone has to understand Musk’s motives is a damning video, his past words and actions, and plenty of circumstantial evidence about his beliefs. What is undeniable is that watching Musk do that onstage while thousands stood on their feet cheering was more than ominous. Across the internet,
Wired reports, neo-Nazis are thrilled at what they believe is a direct signal from the centibillionaire. In many ways, it is a fitting spectacle to begin the second Trump administration: a bunch of people arguing endlessly over something everyone can see with their own eyes.
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